For a long time, I thought that
MapQuest was one of the coolest
sites on the Internet. If you can remember to pre-Internet days, you
know that finding a detailed map of even your own local city wasn't
always easy, and finding a particular street via that arcane map
street index was nearly impossible (just look somewhere in the N-5
square). MapQuest made finding an address on a map much easier. You
just enter the address and you get a map. With the addition of driving
directions, this was a quantum leap forward for auto-based navigators
everywhere.

MapQuest and a few others set the early standard for Internet map
sites. In the early days, MapBlast
was an independent competitor of Mapquest, but it is now part of the
Microsoft empire, Microsoft having employed its usual practice of
buying other companies which have done stuff much better than they
could. MapsOnUS is another site
which provides a basic mapping service, but they seem to be just
licensing Microsoft's online maps to support their online yellow and
white pages business. More recently,
Yahoo has entered the maps
fray, and even Amazon has
released their own maps site which is
still under development.

All of these sites operate in similar ways. You can enter an address
or location and then see a map which matches that location as closely as
possible. You can scroll in each of the major compass point directions
and zoom in or out to get more or less detailed view. Once you find a
location, you can get driving directions to or from another location.
This basic functionality has worked well enough to make these sites very
popular.

I'm sad to say that MapQuest has been replaced as one of the coolest
sites on the Internet. That title now goes to
Google Maps. The search engine
juggernaut, which is well known as a site for finding things on the
Internet, can now help you find things on the Earth and other local
planets. Google Maps provides the same functionality as other map sites,
allowing you to put in a location and see a map. From this point,
however, other features make this site even more fun and useful.

Pull up a map on Google Maps and you can click and drag your mouse to
scroll the map. Click on "Satellite" and you can see a satellite photo
of the area you've mapped. Click on "Hybrid" and you can see the
satellite photo overlaid with street and landmark names. Like other
services, there is a feature to get driving directions. The additional
visual information provided by the satellite feature, however, makes
this maps service even more compelling. Not only can you get an idea of
the streets along your route, but an idea of what buildings you might
see, or at least how developed an area is.

Not content with the Earth, however, Google also offers
Google Moon. This site is intended
to commemorate the first manned moon landing, and provide similar
functionality to Google Maps, but without driving directions or street
names. Instead, you can zoom in on the sites of the various Apollo moon
landings. But, don't zoom too close, lest you reveal that Google has a
sense of humor as well as fun technology. Given their expanding
viewpoint, can Google Mars be in our near future?